Family History

24 August 2016, 12:45 am

It happens slowly,

all at once.

Those of them who know the story

leave those of us who know less.

We who know little

begin to pass on the narrative

to those who know nothing.

We deemed it fitting,

they were so young.

What would we tell them of the hurts,

of the anger,

resentment?

I find the story necessary,

now those who were there when I wasn't

begin to fall silent. Few now can tell me

what I don't already know.

Few now can give me what I never wanted,

what now I can't live without--

the mortar to hold together

the gross, obvious bricks I couldn't bury,

the wounds that never healed.

There are pains which cannot be relieved
by therapy, by understanding,

by the act of naming.

They must be lanced and drained,

but the tools for such grow few

as time dances away from us,

as do the Ones Who Know,

the Ones Who Might Bring Understanding,

the Ones Who Are No Longer.

moving target

26 February 2009

Time is a moving target in its banks--
like dunes I barely own before they shift,
take on a different shape, a different place.
They move into a different time, and I
no longer recognize the clouds or sky
above them, much less this landscape
the river never ceases to mold.

dunes

28 January 2009

I trace the curve of my belly
too many times a day to count
with my eyes. I watch my skin
rise and fall in different places
than it used to, and I wonder
when these dunes will cease
to shift. My thoughts are prone

to solidify more swiftly
than the contours of my breasts--
from moment to moment,
I think, “this shape is It--
this is Me,” and the synapses fire

M-E.

Then the wind picks up,
and the dunes shift again.